Music journey continues to Gayaki and loving it

My music journey is slowly progressing. I am loving every minute of it. 

Thanks to my guruji Shri. Dhananjay Marathe-ji, Warje, Pune, who's teaching style is perfect. 

First of all, the sessions are online (though offline can be chosen). We get to decide on mutual timings depending on our schedules, so flexibility is there. This was a hurdle for me before I started learning.

But mainly, he has a way of simplifying things so well, and explaining every facet of the raag, that I get to covert the artistic explanation to technical in my mind. This helps me learn. When I know the nature of the raag, what swar should come in what sequence, and how it compares with other raags.

He answers all questions patiently. 

My Achievement. (I'll post a pic of the certificate soon)

I passed the Praveshika Pratham oral exam in First class. I'm proud of myself!  

8 raags, lakshangeet, tarana, dhrupad and other technical theory... all memorized. Kind of nervous reciting what was asked. 

Now I am learning it differently this year. Moved on to Gayaki i.e. slower paced learning where we get to know a raag deeply, to cover vakra taan, raag swaroops, vilambit khayals, chota khayal, tarana, and much more! 

For a person handling corporate life, managing home and family, it is a tough job to learn Indian / Hindustani classical music. But it is possible with a bit of management, lots of patience, technology, and loads of passion to learn it. 

Few days in the village

You might have stayed in some village (in India) and woken up to a faint smoke in the air. It comes from the water boilers that use ash and some wood to boil water. The water gets piping hot and there's a smoke of the burnt wood n ash, mingled with steam ... a delicious aroma. At the same time you might see a lady making tea on a chulha (shegdi) - an Indian stove that uses dung cakes as fuel.... again a superb mixture of aroma of tea and the smoke from the stove.

I remembered Sachin and Seema today and my mind went back to about 15 years ago, when I had visited with Seema, to her native place in Akola.
Seema is my closest friend and Sachin her younger brother. Right from my childhood, me and my sisters religiously tie rakhi to Sachin each year. Sachin hardly forgets the occasion to visit us.

Oh, I remember the near 14 hour cramped ST bus journey to Akola with Seema very much comfortable amidst the crowds, Seema’s mom trying to give me a banana during the journey and me refusing it for fear of its obvious retreat from my stomach.

In Akola, Seema's ancestral house was 3 floured building with the wooden structure matching old lavish homes. It even had an old styled fan made of cloth on a wooden bar attached to the roof. You had to pull the roop at the wall to fan the room. We visited lots of other houses nearby, saw some great temples, walked through farms and went to the river for play. It was a new experience, especially since I hadn't seen anything but metros and other cities. None of my relatives live in villages and all have settled long back in cities for livelihood.

Reminiscing those days...

I don't detest cooking... but it is not like breathing!

I love cooking. Right from my tenth grade, I could cook basic meals (and some frilly stuff too once in a blue moon). Initially I took it as a challenge... sort of like a chemistry experiment we used to do in our twelth grade chemistry lab. No, seriously, like any dedicated group, we entered the chemistry lab with the sole objective of entertainment, trying to mix some liquids and powders to create jazzy results (mostly acheiving heavy fumes with the stuff hardening in the test tube and rendering it useless for future experiments!) Sometimes we did get beautiful results like for example, a cyan colored precipitate floating in a reddish liquid of some sort. Whatever. My point is, I took cooking to be like that.

Cooking is nothing but adding interesting stuff to your preparation and presenting it in such a way that the person in front of you can eat it without frowning (and still survive hehehe). I think I am downgrading myself a lot here. In reality my husband, mom, dad and friendz love to eat what I make. I like being surrounded with various masalas and spices, choosing what to add to make this dish lil bit different than what I had cooked earlier. I don't kill my time though with this stuff.. as I have office to go to, but this is damn interesting.

I love the fact that I am an Indian. By virtue of that, I can get tonnes of spices and masalas on my shelf, and I love to taste them too. From one of my friend, I have heard that most cooked food abroad looks whitish, creamish, or greyish ...and very little spicy. People there are generally intolerant towards spices (ofcourse they wouldn't be able to afford them, even if they were - another plus for being in India.)

I did enjoy cooking once in a blue moon. But life has changed ... I got married last month and now have the full fledged responsibility of cooking alteast 2 meals a day without a break! I can manage the time no issues, but it is no longer as enjoyable as it was before since I consider it as a mere task these days to be done with. To get it over witha and reach office within a reasonable time (we have flexi timings). And again to get back home and get it done with to go to sleep in time. I am wondering if life ever gives us a chance to enjoy something so much that we don't start hating it. Why do we start getting bored of things that we love to do... if we do it everyday? Time is a factor, but I think energy and dedication is another...

Will think about that...